I try to log my observing and related activities in a regular blog - sometimes there will be a delay but I usually catch up. An index of all my blogs is on the main menu at the top of the page with daily, weekly or monthly views. My Twitter feed is below. I am also interested in photograping wildlife when I can and there is a menu option above to look at some of my images. I try to keep the news feeds from relevant astronomical sources up to date and you will need to scroll down to find these.

The Celestron 14 is mounted on a Paramount ME that I have been using for about 10 years now - you can see that it is mounted on a tripod so is a portable set up. I still manage to transport it on my own and set it all up even though I have just turned 70! It will run for hours centering galaxies in the 12 minute field even when tripod mounted.

I am back in Spain for a few weeks and reorganising my equipment in the observatory. The run off roof observatory I bought in Spain has proved to be excellent and has the advantage that it could be easily dismantled and relocated if I wished to do so as the roof and walls can be simply unscrewed.

During my day on the stand for the Society for the History of Astronomy at the International Astronomy Show at Stoneleigh Park in Kenilworth near Coventry earlier this month I visited the stand of 365 Astronomy who are the main distributors for PrimaLuce Lab who are based in Northern Italy. I was interested in side by side telescope mounting for my 8-inch RC, my 80mm Skywatcher refractor with a ZWO Colour camera for guiding and planetary imaging , my modified Canon 40D attached to the OTA of my Meade ETX 90 and my un-modified Canon 40D with 50mm and 300mm Canon lenses - all to be mounted on my Paramount MyT. On the 365 stand I spoke to Filippo Bradaschia, the CEO of Primaluce who demonstrated their PLUS system Dovetail Bars and Clamps. I particularly liked the clamps that could take either Losmandy or Vixen Dovetails. to cut a long story short I flew back to Spain with a 49.5cm Primaluce Losmandy Bar, a large and a small clamp in my hand luggage. The large Losmandy Bar, fitting diagonally in my regulation size hand luggage caused some consternation at Manchester Airport Security. I could see no reason on the website security guidance not to take it but it took 3 people to finally agree to let me take it on board. A very difficult job for them. In future I will send any similar items by post. Primaluce has a number of videos on their equipment presented by Filippo - this is the one about Dovetails and Clamps. Also this video. These are the items I bought.